Originally posted on Instagram (@jryanlonaswrites)
Writing poems of the moment is a spiritual discipline for me. When life is full and time to spend on the things that pour life back in is snatched in tiny segments of days, creativity is too often the first thing to go.
But through the wonder of making, even the tiniest of sabbaths can expand, and fill a space much broader than it might seem to merit. It is, after all, not the wonder of the world that is small but our capacity to notice it.
The abundance of art is a work of the Holy Spirit, rolling back scarcity like a scroll whether the artist is ready or not. And so I look for ekphrasis in the daily grind or chase rabbit trails of memory to capture the inside of a moment, in hope that I might speak something truer than I may feel. Sometimes all you have is a glance out the window, but eternity is bound up in every molecule of creation.
“Temple”
Driving a rainy highway
To Atlanta from Birmingham,
I did not expect to be called—
Summoned to worship by a song,
That reached a crescendo chord
At the precise moment I passed.
But there at milepost 202,
Early redbuds, orange maple blooms,
Dark pines, and pale elm samaras
Glistened against dampened asphalt
And gold marcescence of beeches
To make this mountain holler glow
Like the hollow of God’s own hand.
I could have lived a thousand lives
Within that holy, speeding flash
Of too-warm February woods
And the glory of imagination.